STF decides that reduction of Conservation Units in RO is unconstitutional

Ívina Garcia – From Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – The Federal Supreme Court (STF) confirmed the unconstitutionality of the attempt to reduce the limits of the Jaci-Paraná Extractive Reserve and Guajará-Mirim State Park, in a lawsuit filed by the Legislative Assembly of Rondônia (ALE-RO), by State Complementary Law 1089/2021.

Approved unanimously by the 25 state lawmakers, the Complementary Law called for reducing the limits of the Jaci-Paraná extractive reserve by up to 171 thousand hectares, leaving only 10% of the original area, and the dismemberment of the Guajará-Mirim State Park by about 55 thousand hectares of its conservation unit.

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The justification of the ALE-RO was that the squatters who invaded the reserves are poor people who need to use the space in the conservation units. However, the STF countered, saying that the document proposed by the ALE-RO did not identify the invaders or map precisely which areas were occupied by them.

The law was even approved by the governor of the State of Rondônia, Colonel Marcos Rocha (PSC), but was soon subject to a request for an unconstitutionality analysis by the Attorney General’s Office of the Federal Public Ministry, which recalled the Principle of the Prohibition of Retrogression, in which the legislator cannot establish laws that reduce the environmental protection approved by previous norms, under penalty of violating the Federal Constitution.

The coordinator of the Amazon Legal Network of the Climate and Society Institute, Ciro Brito, recalls that this decision comes after a request from the Federal Public Ministry for the removal of the invaders from the Conservation Units. “This decision was super important and goes in a very strict sense of legality. Because these people have not been identified, so we can’t make a vulnerability analysis without identifying them”, he says.

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Preservation

Brito also mentions the essential role that Conservation Units have in environmental preservation. “This is a positive decision because, due to the history of these Conservation Units, especially by organizations and associations that have been following this socio-environmental defense, they have been very important for guaranteeing conservation, curbing deforestation, land grabbing, and for guaranteeing the right of the traditional communities that live there, extractivists and indigenous people,” he highlights.

Since it was set up, the attempt to diminish the Conservation Units approved by ALE-RO happened without public consultations or specific studies capable of providing grounds for possible environmental impacts.

Ciro points out that it is not mandatory for the legislative assemblies of the states to hold public consultations, but that there is a recommendation that decisions like these be consulted. “It was a measure that the deputies themselves took, and one of the allegations that many activists had was that some lawmakers defend sectorial interests, of mining, gold exploration and land grabbers,” he concludes, about the STF’s decision.